A relatively easy way to build KDE from source on your own is Konstruct which mostly takes care of downloading and building all necessary packages.
It can also handle KOffice which is normally released separately from the rest of KDE. The number of to be installed components from inside the available modules can be further restricted by
building KDE from CVS using kde-build.
If you manage that, you can also start calling yourself an expert about CVS and compiling; congratulations.

Summary and conclusion

While this overview has become a monster already, we are still afraid that we missed some interesting parts about the KDE project. The somewhat subtle, but nevertheless massive progress the project
made between KDE version 3.1 and 3.2 shows that the foundation for both the development and the community is growing
yet stable, while the community as a whole is still very eager for even more improvements. And improvements are certainly needed at many places. Initially, the primary focus during development on KDE has been the building and improving of infrastructure, while the input about usability issues in specific cases either simply did not exist or had been ignored. This has changed over the years due to the maturity of the foundation, which now enables many developers to pay attention to usability depending on specific use cases as well. Now it is important for all new members of the project to recognize the flexibility of the existing KDE infrastructure and
leverage it for an increase of usability in the future, ideally not by restricting but by
taking advantage of the existing flexibility. And if the changes between version 3.1 and 3.2 are any indication,
the outlook is very good for future versions. Through its flexibility, service companies are encouraged to adapt KDE to their needs, and end users are suggested to watch out for distributors offering adapted solutions, if not looking to adapt KDE to their needs on their own.

Appendix

A number of easy customizations to the KDE 3.2 desktop

On the left side there is the Universal Sidebar. It is easily added by mouse right clicking a panel and choosing Add > Panel > Universal Sidebar from the panel menu.

This is a frameless KPager instance, configured to show backgrounds and windows as pixmaps in a classical layout. The window had been made frameless using Advanced > No Border in the window menu (shortcut: Alt+F3). Frameless windows (like all windows) can be moved using left mouse button+Alt and resize using right mouse button+Alt. The desktop background (Configure Desktop... > Background) shows default_blue on all four screens, using white as Colors: Single Color and Blending: Hue Shift with different Balance for each desktop for achieving differently colored backgrounds. For speeding up switching between different desktops Size of background cache may need to be set to Unlimited in Advanced Options...

To activate the Menu on the child panel we now need to right click on the desktop, go to the desktop configuration (Configure Desktop... > Behavior > General > Menu Bar at Top of Screen) and choose whether the menu bar should show a Desktop menu bar or the Current application's menu bar.

The clock uses plain type and, like all fonts used in screenshots, Bitstream Vera Sans with some custom colors.

The customization to Konqueror here is limited to some removals from the toolbar (Settings > Configure Toolbars... and removing most of the nondynamic entries); this allows the Location toolbar to fit with the Main toolbar in one row in browsing mode which is saved at default now (Settings > Save View Profile "webbrowsing"...). The system wide used window decoration (Preferences > Appearance & Themes > Window Decorations) and widget style (Preferences > Appearance & Themes > Style) are both Plastik.